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Towing a caravan in Great Britain

British speed law is written in miles per hour and it sorts vehicles by class, not by weight. Schedule 6 to the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 is a table: find the row that describes your vehicle, read across three columns, and that is your limit. A car with a caravan behind it is one row, and the caravan’s weight is nowhere in it.

The three numbers

Item 3 of the table reads “A passenger vehicle, motor caravan, car-derived van or dual-purpose vehicle drawing one trailer”. The three columns are motorway, dual carriageway that is not a motorway, and other road:

• Motorway: 60 mph (97 km/h).
• Dual carriageway: 60 mph (97 km/h).
• Every other road: 50 mph (80 km/h).

The same row covers a 500 kg teardrop and a two-tonne twin-axle. There is no threshold, no concession for a light trailer and no credit for towing well inside the car’s plated limit. Hitch a second trailer and item 4 applies instead: 40 mph on a motorway, 20 mph everywhere else. Part IV of the Schedule adds the tie-breaker — a vehicle falling in two or more classes “shall be treated as falling within the class for which the lower or lowest speed limit is specified”.

What counts as a dual carriageway here

This is where Britain differs from most of Europe, and it works in your favour. Part IV defines a dual-carriageway road as “a road part of which consists of a central reservation to separate a carriageway to be used by vehicles proceeding in one direction from a carriageway to be used by vehicles proceeding in the opposite direction”. That is the whole test. Nothing is said about the number of lanes. A single lane each way with a physical reservation between them is a dual carriageway, and your limit there is 60 rather than 50. Elsewhere in Europe the same phrase usually requires two lanes in each direction.

Towns: 30 mph, and 20 in Wales

Section 81(1) of the 1984 Act says it is not lawful to drive a motor vehicle “on a restricted road at a speed exceeding 30 miles per hour”. A restricted road is, in essence, one with a system of street lighting furnished by lamps placed not more than 200 yards apart — so the limit follows the lamp posts rather than a sign.

Wales moved that floor. The Restricted Roads (20 mph Speed Limit) (Wales) Order 2022 provides that the rate fixed by section 81(1) “is reduced to 20 miles per hour” in relation to Wales, in force since 17 September 2023. The annotations on section 81 as it stands today still record that modification, and record no revocation. England and Scotland keep 30.

Stay out of the outside lane

On a motorway with three or more lanes running your way, a car towing a caravan may not use the right-hand one. The Motorways Traffic (England and Wales) Regulations 1982 apply regulation 12 to, among others, “a motor vehicle drawing a trailer”, and forbid such a vehicle to be “driven or moved or stop or remain at rest on the right hand or offside lane of a length of carriageway which has three or more traffic lanes at any place where all the lanes are open for use by traffic proceeding in the same direction”. The single exception is passing a load of exceptional width. Scotland has the identical rule in its own instrument, regulation 11 of the Motorways Traffic (Scotland) Regulations 1995. The ban is therefore Britain-wide, written twice.

Size, and the drawbar that does not count

The Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986 set the dimensions:

• 18.75 m for a motor vehicle drawing one trailer which is not a semi-trailer (regulation 7, table item 1).
• 7 m for the trailer itself — the catch-all item 9, “any other trailer not being an agricultural trailed appliance or a semi-trailer”.
• 2.55 m wide for a trailer drawn by anything other than a motor cycle (regulation 8, table item 4).

That 7 m is shorter than it sounds, because of a carve-out buried in the definitions. Regulation 3 defines overall length as the distance between planes through the extreme forward and rearward points of the vehicle, and then excludes, for the purposes of regulation 7, “any part of a trailer … designed primarily for use as a means of attaching it to another vehicle and any fitting designed for use in connection with any such part”. The A-frame and coupling are outside the measurement. Seven metres is body length.

One trailer, and the brakes question

• One trailer. Regulation 83, table item 7 allows a motor car “1 trailer in any other case” — two only where one of them is a towing implement carrying part of the other.
• An unbraked trailer needs a much heavier car. Regulation 87 forbids using a wheeled trailer without brakes if “it is drawn by a vehicle of which the kerbside weight is less than twice the sum of the unladen weight of the trailer and the weight of any load which the trailer is carrying”. Kerbside weight is defined as the vehicle with no person aboard, a full tank and no load beyond its normal loose tools. So the car, empty, must weigh at least double the loaded unbraked trailer — a ratio that rules out all but the smallest trailers, and every real caravan.
• A rope or chain tow may not exceed 4.5 m, and may not exceed 1.5 m unless it is made clearly visible to other road users (regulation 86).

Nobody rides in the caravan

Regulation 90 bans carrying passengers in any trailer for hire or reward, and then goes further for caravans specifically: no person may be carried in a wheeled trailer which is a living van having either fewer than four wheels, or four wheels consisting of two close-coupled wheels on each side. A single-axle caravan is exactly that, so it travels empty of people. Only manufacturers, repairers and dealers testing a van are exempt.

When you unhitch, regulation 89 requires a detached trailer standing on a road to have at least one wheel prevented from revolving by a parking brake, chain, chock or other efficient device. Chocks are not optional courtesy.

Which licence — Britain is the generous one

Schedule 2 to the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) Regulations 1999 puts in category B a car up to 3.5 tonnes together with a trailer up to 750 kg, or with any trailer where the combination stays within 3.5 tonnes. On its own that is the ordinary European position. But column 3 of the same table lists B + E as an additional category to B, and regulation 43(3) provides that a licence granted on passing the test “shall in addition authorise the driving of all classes of motor vehicle included in a category … specified in column (3) of Schedule 2”. Category B+E is a category B car with a trailer whose maximum authorised mass does not exceed 3.5 tonnes.

A plain British car licence therefore tows a caravan of up to 3,500 kg without any additional test. What still binds is the car itself: the towing limit and train weight on its plate, which no licence rule enlarges.

Great Britain, not the whole United Kingdom

Everything above is Great Britain: England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland legislates separately, and its class-based limits sit in the Motor Vehicles (Speed Limits) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1989 under article 39 of the Road Traffic Regulation (Northern Ireland) Order 1997. legislation.gov.uk holds only the metadata for those 1989 regulations, not their text, so this page makes no claim about the Northern Irish figures rather than guess at them.

Campeur plans Britain at 80 km/h

The planner carries one speed per country and it must never sit above the law. For Britain that is 80 km/h, which is 50 mph — the ordinary-road figure. Motorway and dual-carriageway legs come out about 17 km/h pessimistic, which is the right direction to be wrong in.

For contrast, see Poland in detail, where the weight of the caravan is equally irrelevant but a dual carriageway must have two lanes each way before it counts, and France in detail, where a weight line at 3.5 tonnes decides which limits you get.

Sources, all read as the version in force at legislation.gov.uk rather than as first enacted: Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984, Schedule 6 and section 81 (both in force from 5 June 2026); The Restricted Roads (20 mph Speed Limit) (Wales) Order 2022 (S.I. 2022/800), articles 1(3) and 2; The Motorways Traffic (England and Wales) Regulations 1982, regulation 12; The Motorways Traffic (Scotland) Regulations 1995, regulation 11; The Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986, regulations 3, 7, 8, 83, 86, 87, 89 and 90 (in force from 1 June 2026); The Motor Vehicles (Driving Licences) Regulations 1999, regulation 43 and Schedule 2 (in force from 27 July 2026). Each text was also checked for amendments made but not yet folded into it; none of those touch the provisions quoted here. Checked 12 August 2026.

The figures above come from the statutes themselves and are dated, but Campeur is not a legal source and rules change. Check the signs and the law in force before you travel. Found an error? Send it to kontakt@campeur.eu and the page will be corrected.